The line of progress is often interrupted but if we set aside all sentimental prejudices and render a sober judgment upon the record of the last twenty thousand years (the only period about which we possess more or less concrete information) we notice an indubitable if slow rise from a condition of almost unspeakable brutality and crudeness to a state which holds the promise of something infinitely nobler and better than what has ever gone before and even the ghastly blunder of the Great War can not shake the firm conviction that this is true. * * * * * The human race is possessed of almost incredible vitality. It has survived theology. It due time it will survive industrialism. It has lived through cholera and plague, high heels and blue laws. It will also learn how to overcome the many spiritual ills which beset the present generation. * * * * * History, chary of revealing her secrets, has thus far taught us one great lesson. What the hand of man has done, the hand of man can also undo. It is a question of courage, and next to courage, of education. * * * * * That of course sounds like a platitude. For the last hundred years we have had “education” driven into our ears until we are sick and tired of the word and look longingly back to a time when people could neither read nor write but used their surplus intellectual energy for occasional moments of independent thinking. But when I here speak of “education” I do not mean the mere accumulation of facts which is regarded as the necessary mental ballast of our modern children. Rather, I have in mind that true understanding of the present which is born out of a charitable and generous knowledge of the past. In this book I have tried to prove that intolerance is merely a manifestation of the protective instinct of the herd. A group of wolves is intolerant of the wolf that is different (be it through weakness or strength) from the rest of the pack and invariably tries to get rid of this offending and unwelcome companion. A tribe of cannibals is intolerant of the individual who by his idiosyncrasies threatens to provoke the wrath of the Gods and bring disaster upon the whole village and brutally relegates him or her to the wilderness. The Greek commonwealth can ill afford to harbor within its sacred walls a citizen who dares to question the very fundaments upon which the success of the community has been built and in a poor outburst of intolerance condemns the offending philosopher to the merciful death of poison. The Roman state cannot possibly hope to survive if a small group of well-meaning zealots is allowed to play fast and loose with certain laws which have been held indispensable ever since the days of Romulus, and much against her own will she is driven into deeds of intolerance which are entirely at variance with her age-old policy of liberal aloofness.